The one thing that annoys you the most about the RPG maker engine you use

For me since I use rpg maker vx ace, I'd say it's the troop events.

Can not believe how many hoops you have to jump through just to get some of the most basic combat events to run like you want them to.

So, what's the one thing that annoys you the most about the rpg maker engine you use?

Meh, the most annoying thing to me (about Ace - maybe it's true of VX too but I didn't use it) is the mapping.


If there's anything else I really struggle with and MUST have, I just use a script instead.

The mapping, most definitely.  My tile sets would be done so much faster if I wasn't fighting with Ace to get it to work the way I want.

Is that Ace's style of mapping, or all 3 engines?

Crazily enough I don't have anything that annoys me. I find a way around everything usually so I don't have anything that get's on my nerves. xD I do dislike the sound effects for Vx ace though, like the default punching sound *piff piff* xDD It annoys me a lot, but that isn't with the actual maker so I guess that doesn't count. 

Oh yeah, mapping can be annoying as all buggery. :p Especially when using parallax maps!(No,no! that's supposed to be no passablity and that's supposed to be passable! and why is the sprite walking through a picket sign?!)

For me the most annoying thing is the Terrain tool -.-

It's ridiculous that we can't use the "Rectangle", "Circle" and "Bucket" to put Terrain on the map ._.

I'm doing it right now, square by square -.-

Huh? You can, I'm sure. Just click the mapping option, then click the tile you want to place from the left-hand side, then click the square thing and drag it.


In any case, I think the autotiles are a pain in Ace.

For XVAce, I'd definitely say the mapping.  XP's was amazing and allowed you to make great maps with it's 3 layers and unlimited tilesets.

Mostly minor things for me. Most times I find ways around them though.

- Only 1 event per tile.

- Event resets to its original position if you leave the map or save and then load (would've been good to have the option to either reset it or not to reset it).

- Only 2 layers of mapping (one of which is the event layer).

- Not enough troop/battle events and conditional branches for those (e.g. to check for character being inflicted with a debuff, or to make the enemy temporarily 'halfway disappear'; or maybe I just haven't found these options).

- No option to change the Game.exe icon without the use of external software.

- No option to select which RTP components to zip with the final game. I use some aspects of RTP in pretty much all my games, but most times I have no need to include all ~100 MB of the RTP BGM. I know there is a way on how to do this, but it's very fiddly and risky, because you have to import all RTP files manually rather than the maker having the option to choose which folders to import and which to leave behind.

For Ace, which is the one I use primarily, it's definitely the mapping. Being limited to 2 layers (3 with events, but too many and you get performance issues, and you can only have 1 per tile) is a bit too restrictive. Then again, I still really enjoy mapping and creatively working around that constraint (making tile edits etc.).

The mapping is the one thing that annoys me in VX Ace.

I like the 3 layers mapping with unlimited tilesets unique to XP.

You could place and remove tiles on separate layers without affecting each other, and the ability to have (almost) unlimited tiles in one tileset is nothing short of amazing.

Sometimes when I look at VX Ace's A, B, C, D, E tilesets' tabs, it gives me the impression that the maker was originally planned to have 5 layers.

The fact that you can't resize script editor/database/event window (using VX Ace btw). Sure it's negligible for the most of time, but when you dealing with lots of line and writing it's starting to become annoying sometimes.

Ahm, I was talking about the Terrain and not the Mapping  :unsure:

No crop/select tool for mapping (VX Ace), miss that from XP too much :(

@Oriceless: Actually, if you hold the right mouse button and drag, you can select tiles on the map and paste them elsewhere. If you hold shift while copying and pasting, it pastes as-is with no auto tiling. This is what people call the "shift click" technique, which is essential to good Ace mapping :)

Only starting with VX Ace, I don't have much frame of reference in regards to any other maker

Anyway, one of the more frustrating things I often deal with is the database. Sure, it's easier to use than most game engines I've tried, but the severe lack of information (That I have to look up elsewhere) in regards to what some things do is staggering.

I am not a concise man, look at any post on this forum, and chances are you'll find something wordy and explains things three times. As such, where people find an oasis of understanding, I'm frantically looking through the help guide, trying to understand what something is, then asking the forums what it all means.

My pet peeve would be how Region IDs can't use the same Terrain tools as the maps --- no rectangle, circle or flood fill. It makes creating world maps a LOT more tedious than it should be.

For mapping, I think XPs map logic made more sense --- multiple tile layers and no autotiles.  Autotiles are a good idea but make creating tiles far more difficult as Sharm already mentioned.  They also need special handling to look good in more interesting cases (shift click mapping).

I think an ideal mapping system would use the Region IDs, Terrain IDs and Move Routes as separate, specialized layers, and have at least 3, up to 5 maybe map layers of normal tiles.  And in all cases, the powerful map drawing tools would work the same --- flood fill, rectangle, circle, etc.  For Events, you could then say "Event 5 use Move Route 10"

But I'm getting more into the "Features Desired in the Next RPG Maker" thread so I'll stop there.

*warning bad pun incoming* this toppic covers a lot of: pain in the Ace B) :guffaw:

some kind of memory for event states would be really good

that's even more work to work around than the missing 3rd layer in my opinion

Seemingly arbitrary limitations and design decisions.